Genius: The Life Together With Scientific Discipline Of Richard Feynman

This is a 1992 biography of Feynman yesteryear James Gleick. The majority provides goodness coverage of both the life as well as scientific discipline of Feynman. Having read most of the books nigh Feynman, I tin tell that this is the best out there. 

In contrast to the other books which were anecdote heavy, this provides a to a greater extent than balanced coverage of Feynman's life as well as scientific discipline together. The majority also gives goodness insights into some aspects of Feynman's personality that was missing inwards the other books. I hadn't read nigh Feynman's nervous intermission downward on his father's grave, his depressive episodes, as well as his rivalry with other physicians before. The majority also has a chapter discussing Feynman's unacceptable mental attitude towards women.

The scientific discipline coverage inwards the majority is superlative notch, as well as gives a detailed explanation of how the plain of quantum physics started as well as grew inwards to a dependent amongst Feynman's life. We acquire a goodness epitome of how the proposed theories acquire refined as well as evolve equally they interact with other theories as well as physicians both on the theory as well as exercise side of the coin. While roofing the science, the majority manages to rest readable as well as captivating.

My most of import takeaway from the majority is that Feynman's success is due to his potent background inwards Math that he acquired himself during his midpoint schoolhouse as well as high schoolhouse years. He checked out Math books from libraries as well as studied them yesteryear himself. He non only learned from them, he has internalized everything. He invented his ain notation for trigonometry as well as he He for certain had mastered his tools as well as therefore he could apply them to novel problems with ease.

Of course, some other big component division of Feynman is his passionate curiosity. This is probable seeded yesteryear his interactions with his virile someone bring upward equally a kid. Feynman has also carefully cultivated his curiosity throughout his life. When he failed to gain so, he has suffered from beingness blocked as well as unable to gain whatever work. I am guessing that his beingness a goodness floor teller made it slowly for him to regulate/cultivate his curiosity as well as drive.

Some highlights from the commencement chapters of the book

Architect of quantum theories, brash immature grouping leader on the atomic bomb project, inventor of the ubiquitous Feynman diagram, ebullient bongo thespian as well as storyteller, Richard Phillips Feynman was the most brilliant, iconoclastic, as well as influential physicist of modern times. He took the half-made conceptions of waves as well as particles inwards the 1940s as well as shaped them into tools that ordinary physicists could utilisation as well as understand.

One squad of physicists, assembled for the Manhattan Project, met him for the commencement fourth dimension inwards Chicago, where he solved a employment that had baffled them for a month. It was “a shallow agency to justice a superb mind,” 1 of them admitted later, but they had to live impressed, yesteryear the unprofessorial mode equally much equally the feat itself: “Feynman was apparently non struck inwards the prewar mold of most immature academics. He had the flowing, expressive postures of a dancer, the quick spoken communication nosotros stance of equally Broadway, the pat phrases of the hustler as well as the conversational release energy of a finger snapper.” Physicists speedily got to know his bounding theatrical style, his agency of bobbing sidelong from 1 pes to the other when he lectured. They knew that he could never sit down soundless for long as well as that when he did sit down he would slouch comically earlier leaping upward with a abrupt question.

For years he offered a mysterious noncredit class called Physics X, for undergraduates only, inwards a small-scale basement room. Some physicists years afterwards remembered this unpredictable free-form seminar equally the most intense intellectual experience of their education. Above all inwards 1961 he took on the employment of reorganizing as well as teaching the introductory physics class at Caltech. For ii years the freshmen as well as sophomores, along with a squad of graduate-student teaching assistants, struggled to follow a tour de force, the universe according to Feynman. The consequence was published as well as became famous equally “the cerise books”—The Feynman Lectures on Physics. They reconceived the dependent from the bottom up.

In private, with pencil on scratch paper, he labored over aphorisms that he afterwards delivered inwards spontaneous-seeming lectures: Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, therefore each small-scale slice of her cloth reveals the arrangement of the entire tapestry.

There were other kinds of scientific knowledge, but pragmatic noesis was Feynman’s specialty. For him noesis did non describe; it acted as well as accomplished. Unlike many of his colleagues, educated scientists inwards a cultivated European tradition, Feynman did non await at paintings, did non hear to music, did non read books, fifty-fifty scientific books. He refused to allow other scientists explicate anything to him inwards detail, frequently to their immense frustration. He learned anyway. He pursued noesis without prejudice. During a sabbatical he learned plenty biological scientific discipline to brand a small-scale but genuine contribution to geneticists’ agreement of mutations inwards DNA. He 1 time offered (and therefore awarded) a one-thousand-dollar prize for the commencement working electrical motor less than 1 sixty-fourth of an inch long, as well as his musing on the possibilities of tiny mechanism made him, a generation later, the intellectual virile someone bring upward of a legion of self-described nanotechnologists. In his youth he experimented for months on terminate with trying to detect his unraveling current of consciousness at the signal of falling asleep. In his midpoint historic menstruum he experimented with inducing out-of-body hallucinations inwards a sensory-deprivation tank, with as well as without marijuana.

“An honest man, the outstanding intuitionist of our age, as well as a prime number instance of what may prevarication inwards shop for anyone who dares to follow the crunch of a dissimilar drum.”

Melville Feynman (he pronounced his surname similar the to a greater extent than criterion variants: Fineman or Feinman) came from Minsk, Byelorussia.

There were no instant thoughts inwards the middle-class Jewish families of New York nigh the value of ambition on the children’s behalf.

The adult Richard Feynman became an skillful teller of stories nigh himself, as well as through these stories came a epitome of his virile someone bring upward equally a adult man transmitting a laid of lessons nigh science.

Still, his grade on the schoolhouse IQ attempt was a but respectable 125.

For students whose competitive instincts could non live satisfied on the baseball game field, New York’s high schools had the Interscholastic Algebra League: inwards other words, math team.

In his senior year, when all the city’s world as well as individual schools competed inwards the annual entitle at New York University, Feynman placed first.

He memorized tables of logarithms as well as practiced mentally deriving values inwards between. He began to create total notebooks with formulas, continued fractions whose sums produced the constants π as well as e.

Feynman could sink into a trance of concentration that fifty-fifty his menage unit of measurement industrial plant life unnerving.

The adult Feynman asked: If all scientific noesis were lost inwards a cataclysm, what unmarried contention would save the most data for the adjacent generations of creatures? How could nosotros best locomote yesteryear on our agreement of the world? He proposed, “All things are made of atoms—little particles that displace some inwards perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a piffling distance apart, but repelling upon beingness squeezed into 1 another,”

Philosophy at MIT only irritated Feynman more. It struck him equally an manufacture built yesteryear incompetent logicians.

Feynman had developed an appetite for novel problems—any problems. He would halt people he knew inwards the corridor of the physics edifice as well as inquire what they were working on. They speedily discovered that the interrogation was non the commons small-scale talk. Feynman pushed for details.

Developing a theory for reflection yesteryear multiple-layer sparse films was non therefore dissimilar for Feynman from math squad inwards the now-distant yesteryear of Far Rockaway. He could see, or feel, the intertwined infinities of the problem, the beam of calorie-free resonating dorsum as well as forth betwixt the distich of surfaces, as well as therefore the adjacent pair, as well as therefore on, as well as he had a giant mental kit pocketbook of formulas to effort out.

It took him a few pages to demonstrate a amend method. He showed that 1 could calculate the forcefulness straight for a given configuration, without having to await at nearby configurations at all. His computational technique led straight to the gradient of the release energy curve—the force—instead of producing the total flexure as well as deriving the gradient secondarily. The consequence caused a small-scale sensation amid MIT’s physics faculty.

A handwritten postscript that would non appear on the carbon copies Slater got to the point: “Feynman of class is Jewish ...” He wanted to assure Smyth at that spot were mitigating circumstances: ... but equally compared for instance with Kanner as well as Eisenbud he is to a greater extent than attractive personally yesteryear several orders of magnitude. We’re non trying to acquire rid of him—we desire to hold him, as well as privately promise you lot won’t give him anything. But he apparently has decided to locomote to Princeton. I guarantee you’ll similar him if he does. Morse, too, reported that Feynman’s “physiognomy as well as manner, however, demo no line of this feature as well as I gain non believe the affair volition live whatever groovy handicap.”

Quantum mechanics was triumphing non because a few leading theorists industrial plant life it mathematically convincing, but because hundreds of materials scientists industrial plant life that it worked. It gave them insights into problems that had languished, as well as it gave them a renewed livelihood. One had only to sympathise the manipulation of a few equations as well as 1 could finally compute the size of an atom or the precise gray sheen of a pewter surface.

Jehle told Feynman he had made an of import discovery. He was struck yesteryear the unabashed pragmatism inwards Feynman’s treatment of the mathematics, therefore dissimilar from Dirac’s to a greater extent than detached, to a greater extent than aesthetic tone. “You Americans!” he said. “Always trying to regain a utilisation for something.”

The Feynman aura—as it had already become—was strictly local. Feynman had non yet finished his instant yr of graduate school. He remained ignorant of the basic literature as well as unwilling fifty-fifty to read through the papers of Dirac or Bohr. This was at 1 time deliberate. In preparing for his oral qualifying examination, a rite of passage for every graduate student, he chose non to study the outlines of known physics. Instead he went upward to MIT, where he could live alone, as well as opened a fresh notebook. On the entitle page he wrote: Notebook Of Things I Don’t Know About. For the commencement but non the lastly fourth dimension he reorganized his knowledge. He worked for weeks at disassembling each branch of physics, oiling the parts, as well as putting them dorsum together, looking all the spell for the raw edges as well as inconsistencies. He tried to regain the essential kernels of each subject. When he was done he had a notebook of which he was peculiarly proud.

It was said of Feynman that he had an extraordinary physical intuition, but that solitary did non occupation concern human relationship for his analytic power.

Just equally some people run across numerals inwards color inwards their mind’s eye, Feynman associated colors with the abstract variables of the formulas he understood therefore intimately. “As I’m talking,” he 1 time said, “I run across vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke as well as Emde’s book, with calorie-free tan j’s, slightly violet-bluish n’s, as well as night brownish x’s flight around. And I wonder what the hell it must await similar to the students.”

He did non wait, equally Bethe did, to double-check every intuitive leap. His commencement stance did non e'er work. His cannier colleagues developed a dominion of thumb: If Feynman says it 3 times, it’s right.

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